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Abbreviated pundit roundup: Legacies of Trump and race permeate the current political environment [1]

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Date: 2022-08-24

This is a really good encapsulation of the Biden approval/generic ballot intersection. Dems overwhelmingly winning Biden approvers and Reps similarly with strong disapprovers. But Dems winning over Biden soft disapprovers with a big chunk undecided. https://t.co/8vKPWsFhNJ pic.twitter.com/JnsziqC68W

Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:

But that’s not true. Inaction is as much a political choice as action is, and far from preserving the status quo — or securing some level of social peace — it sets in stone a new world of total impunity for any sufficiently popular politician or member of the political elite.

This fact, alone, makes a mockery of the idea that the ultimate remedy for Trump is to beat him at the ballot box a second time, as if the same supporters who rejected the last election will change course in the face of another defeat. It also makes clear the other weight-bearing problem with the argument against holding Trump accountable, which is that it treats inaction as an apolitical and stability-enhancing move — something that preserves the status quo as opposed to action, which upends it.

And these 2020 deniers aren’t sitting still, either; as these election results show, they are actively working to undermine democracy for the next time Trump is on the ballot.

x “I’M NOT CONCEDING!” Laura Loomer attacks the Republican Party and alleges voter fraud after losing GOP primary to incumbent Florida congressman Daniel Webster. #news6 pic.twitter.com/qpuhJUIpyJ — Mike DeForest (@DeForestNews6) August 24, 2022

Matt Lewis/Daily Beast:

Trump’s Legacy Is Convincing Idiots That They Should Run for Office I get the appeal of having “outsiders” come in and “shake up the system.” But MAGA candidates are proving the folly of the know-nothing candidate. Donald Trump has left his mark on the American body politic in myriad ways. But one of the lesser-discussed aspects of the way the 45th president forever changed this country is how he’s endowed unqualified idiots with the grandiose confidence to believe they, too, should run for high political office. Look no further than the November midterms. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged that it was more likely the House would flip to Republicans than the Senate, blaming “candidate quality.” The critique was interpreted as a veiled shot at Trump (who boosted some of the weakest Senate candidates, such as Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and former NFL star Herschel Walker in Georgia). The truth, though, is that most people don’t realize that Trump has done even more damage to Republicans’ chances of taking back the Senate.

x According to our most recent survey w/@TheEconomist, Americans approve of the FBI search of Trump's home, by 54% to 36%. Similar margins also approve of the Justice Department investigation taking place.https://t.co/COJkhy5EGm pic.twitter.com/sUkD175Y31 — YouGov America (@YouGovAmerica) August 23, 2022

NY Times:

Democrats Designed the Climate Law to Be a Game Changer. Here’s How. In a first, the measure legally defines greenhouse gases as pollution. That’ll make new regulations much tougher to challenge in court. When the Supreme Court restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to fight climate change this year, the reason it gave was that Congress had never granted the agency the broad authority to shift America away from burning fossil fuels. Now it has. Throughout the landmark climate law, passed this month, is language written specifically to address the Supreme Court’s justification for reining in the E.P.A., a ruling that was one of the court’s most consequential of the term. The new law amends the Clean Air Act, the country’s bedrock air-quality legislation, to define the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an “air pollutant.” That language, according to legal experts as well as the Democrats who worked it into the legislation, explicitly gives the E.P.A. the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to use its power to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

x The national average price of gasoline has declined for 10 straight weeks to $3.865/gal this morning. Americans spending close to $450 million less today on gasoline than mid-June. The most common price is $3.49/gal, while the average price of the lowest 10% is $3.20/gal. — Patrick De Haan ⛽️📊 (@GasBuddyGuy) August 22, 2022

WSJ:

After Six Months of War in Ukraine, Momentum Tilts Against Russia Moscow retains firepower advantage, but Kyiv is starting to take the initiative, while Western support for Ukraine is holding firm despite economic pain A drone strike on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea on Saturday was one of many recent signs that Russia’s rear areas are increasingly vulnerable to Ukrainian attack. Political and popular backing for Ukraine in the U.S. and most of Europe remains robust, despite fears that a drawn-out war and rising energy and food prices could undermine Western unity.

x Senior US official to CNN: Iran has abandoned another key demand as prospects for reviving the nuclear deal grow https://t.co/iJzqUDMKhT — hoshyarpakistan (@hoshyarpakistan) August 23, 2022

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

Trump’s next Mar-a-Lago move will escalate his supporters’ rage Now, we should retain healthy skepticism toward the Justice Department and its redactions. Indeed, The Post and other news organizations are urging release of the affidavit on the grounds that the public needs to know the rationale for a search of such historic importance. If a heavily redacted affidavit is what’s made public, we won’t know for some time whether the redactions are defensible. But, to be clear, healthy skepticism is not the position Trump and his supporters are taking. They’re casting the search as already existing conclusive proof of totalitarian oppression, resorting to all manner of lurid comparisons to fascist regimes and developing nation dictatorships. Here’s the point: When the starting position is that any and all law enforcement activity related to Trump is inherently illegitimate — that this activity by definition cannot have been justified by reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing — then everything works backward from there.

x This is basically a chart of US energy independence: 2008 was the peak of our energy imports. Since then production increased, consumption leveled, and imports dropped. This is a good news story. And I expect with the #InflationReductionAct the trend extends b/c of low imports. https://t.co/SEScNZcAsU — Michael E. Webber (@MichaelEWebber) August 23, 2022

NY Times:

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